VMware calls future NSX certifications the 'next-gen CCIE'

VMware says future NSX certifications establish the beginning of a network virtualization career path for network and server pros alike.

VMware announced a new network virtualization career path, which includes three certifications focused on the design and implementation of NSX.

The first certification, titled the VMware Certified Professional - Network Virtualization certification, offers a basic look at installing, configuring and administering NSX. It is currently available to the general public. However, current CCIEs are able to skip the introductory course and move on to higher level course work if they choose.

The company's VMware Certified Implementation Expert (VCIX-NV) and the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX-NV) courses will be open to the general public in October 2014. A beta group of 39 professionals have already received their VCDX certification, which is the highest NSX cert available.

VMware hopes to establish the beginning of a new career path that is very similar in structure to Cisco's CCNA and CCIE administrator-to-expert model. In fact, VMware director of networking and security Chris McCain calls the VCIX the "next-gen CCIE."

The company is also designing a publically available fast-track course on "inter-networking" of virtual and physical infrastructure, "which is basically NSX on Cisco," said Chris McCain, VMware Director of Networking and Security.

"We're not blind to the fact that Cisco owns a large share in physical networking. We have an overwhelming amount of folks -- customers and partners -- who want to ensure they understand that these two products work well together," McCain said.

VMware vCloud Director 5.1 New Features For Staters

 

 

For starters, just check out some of the increases in the scalability:

 

	Supported in 5.0	Supported in VCD 5.1 (*)
# of VMs	20,000	30,000
# of powered on VMs	10,000	10,000
# VMs per vApp	64	128
# of hosts	2,000	2,000
# of VCs	25	25
# of users	10,000	10,000
# of Orgs	10,000	10,000
Max # vApps per org	500	3,000
# of vDCs	10,000	10,000
# of Datastores	1,024	1,024
# of consoles	300	500
# of vApp Networks	-	1,000
# of External Networks	-	512
# of Isolated vDC Networks	-	2,000
# of Direct vDC Networks	-	10,000
# of Routed vDC Networks	-	2,000
# Network Pools	-	25
# Catalogs	1,000	10,000

 

(Note: The numbers represented here are ‘soft’ numbers and do not reflect hard limits that can not be exceeded)

You’ll notice that there are some line items here that refer to ‘vDC Networks’. This is a new construct in 5.1, which replaces the organization network concept in previous versions. Organization vDC networks simplify the virtual network topology present in vCloud Director and facilitate more efficient use of resources.

 

That’s not all the networking changes present though! Major enhancements have been introduced with the Edge Gateway. Some highlights include:

 

- The ability to have two different deployment models (compact and full) to provide users a choice over resource consumption and performance.

 

- High availability provided by having a secondary Edge Gateway that can seamlessly take over in the event of a failure of the primary

 

- Multiple interfaces. In previous versions the vShield Edge device supported 2 interfaces. The Edge Gateways in vCloud Director 5.1 now support 10 interfaces and can be connected to multiple external networks.

 

The networking services that are provided out of the box with vCloud Director 5.1 have also been enhanced. DHCP can be provided on isolated networks. NAT services now allow for the specification of SNAT and DNAT rules to provide a finer degree of control. There’s also support for a virtual load balancer that can direct network traffic to a pool of servers using one of several algorithms.

 

Additionally, vCloud Director 5.1 introduces support for VXLAN. This provides ‘virtual wires’ that the cloud administrator can use to define thousands of networks that can be consumed on demand.

 

Providing the ability to have a L2 domain with VXLAN that encompasses multiple clusters gives rise to the need to support the use of multiple clusters within a Provider VDC. This is part of the Elastic VDC feature that has now been extended to support the Allocation Pool resource model, along with the Pay-As-You-Go model.

 

Support for Storage Profiles provides the ability for cloud administrators to quickly provide multiple tiers of storage to the organizations. Previously, to do this, one had to define multiple Provider VDCs. For those who have done this, a feature has also been added to allow for the merger of multiple Provider VDCs into a single object.

 

Numerous changes were also added to increase the usability. Top on this list is the support for snapshots! The UI has also been updated to make it a easier for the end user to create new vApps, reset leases, and find items within the catalog. Support for tagging objects with metadata information is also provided through the UI as well.

 

I’m sure you’ll agree that this represents a lot of features… And I haven’t even gotten into the API extensibility features

or the support for Single Sign-On (SSO)! For now, if you want more information, I’d suggest reading the What’s New whitepaper here:

 

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vCloud-Director-51-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

 

Cisco Just Found A Brilliant New Way To Beat VMware

 

Cisco just bought a small 1 percent stake in Parallels, best known for its software that lets you run Windows apps on a Mac.

The stake, however, gives Cisco a seat on Parallels' board.

It's an interesting move for Cisco with a lot of implications.

 

The software that lets you run Windows on a Mac, or more generally multiple operating systems on the same computer, is called virtualization.

 

That's what VMware does. And Cisco, once friendly with VMware, is increasingly butting heads with it in the data center.

Although Parallels is best known for the its desktop software, the company also has server virtualization technology. VMware's server virtualization software is its bread-and-butter product.

 

Cisco and VMware had been close partners until last summer, with Cisco heavily relying on VMware's software and on storage products from VMware's parent company, EMC. The three of them were so cozy, they actually had a joint venture, VCE. VCE sells hardware and services to data centers and was pretty successful, reportedly selling around $1 billion worth of gear in 2012.

 

Then VMware bought a startup, Nicira, for $1.26 billion last summer. Nicira plays in the field of software-defined networking that completely changes how companies build networks. Its a disruptive technology that could really hurt Cisco.

 

The Nicira acquisition drew a line in the sand between Cisco and VMware with VCE caught in the middle.

 

But Cisco was far too dependent on VMware to declare all-out war immediately. Virtualization is a must-have feature for servers, so Cisco needs it for a popular line of servers it sells. Plus Cisco is a huge VMware customer for its internal IT systems.

 

This stake in Parallels gives Cisco direct access to alternative virtualization technology to use in its servers, which could set it up, possibly, to sever the VCE relationship.

 

It's not the first move Cisco has made to cut ties with VMware. In October, Cisco released its own version of a cloud-building tech called OpenStack. OpenStack scares VMware. It competes with VMware's prize cloud operating system, vCloud.

 

Armed with its own version of OpenStack, and a stake in Parallels, Cisco has way to ditch its internal use of VMware's software.

 

Plus, last month, Cisco bought cloud management company Cloupia, for an undisclosed sum. That means Cisco is assembling the pieces to not just ditch VMware, but to compete head on.

 

The Non-definitive guide to the VMware vExpert Program, Tips, Tricks, How to become a vExpert !

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild)

 

 

What exactly is this whole VMware vExpert Program and what does it mean to me?! I know that’s what you are asking, because you probably did a search of “VMware vExpert” and turned up this VMware vExpert FAQ Page, or some of these great details outlined in the vExpert Directory.

But if you haven’t read those pages, or you want a little context on exactly what the VMware vExpert Program is all about, it is extremely similar to the acclaimed Microsoft MVP Program, the EMC Elect Program, and even the rarely heard of Citrix Technology Professionals Program! Essentially, this is an award based upon your contributions to society, community, industry. Going above and beyond simply ‘doing your job’. That about sums it up!

What makes the VMware vExpert Program so special

The VMware vExpert Community is very much just that, a community of likeminded professionals who come together for the betterment of society as a whole. It may all sound sort of altruistic but there is no more accurate depiction of the truth than that. The community is filled with people who work tirelessly to help others, who are seen as and sought after as the experts in the industry, many of which feel they don’t deserve the accolade and others who work so diligently to ensure that their impact on those around them eclipses any benefits that may be derived from the mention. The vExperts are the authors, bloggers, podcasters, troubleshooters, helpers, friends and family which makes VMware and Virtualization such a prevalent thread it has been transforming the industry ever since its inception.

A few of the benefits ‘granted’ to the members of the vExpert community are

• Public recognition of the vExpert award with a certificate, gift, permission to display a logo, and inclusion in any public vExpert listing
• Access to a private vExpert community of your peers
• Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com
• Access to exclusive events, beta programs, software licenses, and other exclusive opportunities to participate in activities with VMware. vExperts do not represent VMware and are not required to participate in any activities

But those are just the *published* benefits, here are some of the unpublished yet fully realized by members of the vExpert Community

• Priority Access to Private Betas
• Blogger Early Access Programs (Including Deep Dive Webinars with Product Teams)
• Influencer Day and Product Launch Briefings (Be on the inside track with the analysts and product launch embargoes)
• Focus Groups with SMB and Partners
• Special Opportunities presented by Partners such as Tintri, Symantec, EMC, Trainsignal, Tech Field Day, and more!
• And a particular favorite of many, private vExpert only CTO Party and Briefings with the Office of the CTO and Steve Herrod at VMworld

But it doesn’t stop there. Some of the extra benefits realized not by all, but by many as the form of opportunities tend to be

• Special Access to Guest Blogging spots on VMTN and other blogportunities
• Community Roundtable Podcast speaking opportunities and special guest access
• VMware Press opportunities to be a Tech Reviewer or Author (They’re always looking for talent, and check the vExpert pool often)
• Other Press sources opportunities to write and review (Sybex, Video training houses, tech blogs, Windows IT Pro, Speaking Gigs, etc)
• … The opportunities are seemingly endless!
• 
  

What exactly are the paths to being a vExpert

Since this is the non-definitive guide after all I can only go on what we know from the 2012 Calendar year which could possibly change. But instituted as part of this cycle was a growth of the vExpert selection criteria to differing paths of Experts; Evangelist, Customer, Partner.

Evangelist

The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path.

Customer

The Customer Path is for internal evangelists and community leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have contributed to success stories, customer references, or public interviews and talks, or were active community contributors, such as VMUG leaders.

Partner (VMware Partner Network)

The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements.

What about the selection criteria for the vExpert Program

First let me start out by displaying what are a few caveats and considerations before I get too deeply into selection criteria.

• The vExpert award is based on contributions during the past calendar year. Activities earlier than the past calendar year are not considered in the awards and should not be entered on the application form.
• You can use the application form to apply for yourself, and an invitation form to invite others to apply. Everyone is strongly encouraged to apply.
• The vExpert designation is not a popularity contest. Multiple invitations or recommendations are not considered as a criteria for the award, so please do not ask multiple people to fill in the invitation form for you.
• The vExpert designation is given to an individual, not to a company. Your contributions could have been a part of your corporate activities, but your individual contribution should be clear and noted in your application.
• Designation duration is for one year. Existing vExperts are not guaranteed a renewal and are evaluated each year along with other nominees. 
  A committee of VMware employees chooses the recipients of the vExpert designation.
• You must be 18 years old to be eligible for the award.

Now that we have that out of the way, here are some of the types of things they’d look for on the application in years gone past (for what would be the Evangelist path, As details of Customer/Partner and other evolutions for 2013 come about, I’ll be sure to discuss that as it comes…)

Contributions and Activities to materials such as:

• Blogs (Blog posts you’ve written re:VMware/Virtualization, and contributions you’ve made to other blogs)
• Other Writing (Newsletters, Books, Whitepapers, Articles, KB Articles, Tutorials, Guides, etc)
• Multimedia (Podcasts, Videos, Interviews…)
• Events and Speaking (Organized events, spoke at them, involvement, etc)
• Online Communities (IT Forums you’ve contributed, participated in and been involved in)
• Tools and Resources (Tools you’ve created, collected, contributed to, resources and guides you’ve created, collections, etc)
• VMware Programs (Councils, Partnerships, Betas and other kinds of contributions)
• Actions and activities having gone above and beyond (self explanatory)

For a little more context and details about what each of these lines might be asking for (this is dated) refer to this link for the 2011 Application

The vExpert Program seems amazing and I work in Virtualization but I’ll wait until next year

This is for all of you out there who have said that, or some similar version of events. I know who you are, I’ve spoken with you a number of times. You contribute greatly within the community, internally at a customer, or extensively through the Partner organization. You’re familiar with the vExpert program but you say ‘eh, I’ll deal with that next year’. If this were like a certification deciding to take action NEXT month or NEXT quarter wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this isn’t a Certification. The VMware vExpert Program is a year-long designation based upon your actions for a calendar year. So what does that mean? By not being nominated or choosing to self-nominate yourself when the window of nomination opens, you are costing yourself on the opportunity for an additional 365 days. It’s not to say that ALL those who submit are accepted because they are not, but if you’ve got what it takes and you’re a super star in your own right I cannot for the life of me justify you NOT applying.

Some people like to equate the VMware vExpert to a Certification and will often say “Eh, I’m not changing jobs any time soon, so I don’t see why I should do this”. Yes, certainly like getting a VCP won’t make much of a different to an admin for life but an active Administrator who becomes a vExpert can gain that insight, that knowledge (and getting license keys for testing and all the worlds access never hurts!)

So if I leave you with nothing, I’d like you to take to heart a few tidbits and action items and I’ll share my own experience here

• It doesn’t hurt to apply or self-nominate into the program. If you’re unknown to the populace at large sometimes the first person to knock on that door and shine a light on your accomplishments has to be you, this isn’t about ego (Especially if you’ve accomplished all of the things you share in your contributions)
• This is first and foremost a community, not a ‘corporate charter designated by a policy driven figurehead with stringent metrics to follow’ So what I mean there is, if things don’t go as fast as you want them to be, it is not as though this is an SLA you are paying for; But we’re all in this together so lending a helping hand is never discouraged
• Get involved. Even if you’re objective is not to one day earn the designation of VMware vExpert. Our community is only as strong as its weakest link and as we all grow and become educated we continue to prosper together
• Even if you sit silent on the sidelines, get to know the vExpert’s in the community and more precisely YOUR community. These people didn’t become vExperts for nothing, they’re glad to help, spread the tech love and cherish and grow those around them

A few words from a silent cat

I’ve been a vExpert for as long as there has been a program (Technically not the FIRST year because I missed the submission deadline, but I digress) and every single year I sit back and look at the nomination form which asks countless questions about what your contributions were for the previous calendar year. (Submissions are usually a few months into the year, so remembering back to December let alone the previous January can be a chore!) Every single year I look back and say, “Well, crap I don’t think I did anything, how can I justify or deserve being a vExpert for this year” and then it all starts to settle in. In past years there’d be a request for your TOP blog posts or TOP cited reference points (limited to 2 or 3) and at first I thought ‘how am I going to find even 1 let alone 3!’ which then turns into “Ooops…. I did 20-30 things in the previous year, how am I going to pare THAT down!” This is surprisingly a common problem within the vExpert Community of Evangelists. Before the VMware vExpert program came to be, and long before it had broken out the Evangelist designation…. We were all evangelists in our own right. It wasn’t our job to do this, we didn’t do this because we were trying to achieve or accomplish some targeted ‘goal’, We saw problems in the world which either needed to be solved or we solved and wanted to share our experiences. We saw great things happening and wanted to make sure everyone around us was able to benefit. We don’t do it because we have to, We even don’t exactly do it because we WANT to. We do it because we are vExperts. We are Evangelists. We are community. I think nothing speaks more truer to that than the VMware vExpert program having doubled year over year of number of members accepted into its ranks, and I know we look forward to that number continuing to grow with other passionate and dedicated individuals like ourselves to make Technology, this Community and the World a better place.

 

Digging into Sofware Define Data Center

 

The software defined data center is a relatively new buzzword embraced by the likes of EMC and VMware.  This post is intended to take it a step deeper as I seem to be stuck at 30,000 feet for the next five hours with no internet access and no other decent ideas. For the purpose of brevity (read: laziness) I’ll use the acronym SDDC for Software Defined Data Center whether or not this is being used elsewhere.)

 

First let’s look at what you get out of a SDDC:

 

Legacy Process:

 

In a traditional legacy data center the workflow for implementing a new service would look something like this:

1. Approval of the service and budget
2. Procurement of hardware
3. Delivery of hardware
4. Rack and stack of new hardware
5. Configuration of hardware
6. Installation of software
7. Configuration of software
8. Testing
9. Production deployment

This process would very greatly in overall time but 30-90 days is probably a good ballpark (I know, I know, some of you are wishing it happened that fast.)

 

Not only is this process complex and slow but it has inherent risk. Your users are accustomed to on-demand IT services in their personal life. They know where to go to get it and how to work with it. If you tell a business unit it will take 90 days to deploy an approved service they may source it from outside of IT. This type of shadow IT poses issues for security, compliance, backup/recovery etc.

 

SDDC Process:

 

As described in the link above an SDDC provides a complete decoupling of the hardware from the services deployed on it. This provides a more fluid system for IT service change: growing, shrinking, adding and deleting services. Conceptually the overall infrastructure would maintain an agreed upon level of spare capacity and would be added to as thresholds were crossed. This would provide an ability to add services and grow existing services on the fly in all but the most extreme cases. Additionally the management and deployment of new services would be software driven through intuitive interfaces rather than hardware driven and disparate CLI based.

 

The process would look something like this:

1. Approval of the service and budget
2. Installation of software
3. Configuration of software
4. Testing
5. Production deployment

The removal of four steps is not the only benefit. The remaining five steps are streamlined into automated processes rather than manual configurations. Change management systems and trackback/chargeback are incorporated into the overall software management system providing a fluid workflow in a centralized location. These processes will be initiated by authorized IT users through self-service portals. The speed at which business applications can be deployed is greatly increased providing both flexibility and agility.

 

Isn’t that cloud?

 

Yes, no and maybe. Or as we say in the IT world: ‘It depends.’ SDDN can be cloud, with on-demand self-service, flexible resource pooling, metered service etc. it fits the cloud model. The difference is really in where and how it’s used. A public cloud based IaaS model, or any given PaaS/SaaS model does not lend itself to legacy enterprise applications. For instance you’re not migrating your Microsoft Exchange environment onto Amazon’s cloud. Those legacy applications and systems still need a home. Additionally those existing hardware systems still have value. SDDC offers an evolutionary approach to enterprise IT that can support both legacy applications and new applications written to take advantage of cloud systems. This provides a migration approach as well as investment protection for traditional IT infrastructure.

 

How it works:

 

The term ‘Cloud operating System’ is thrown around frequently in the same conversation as SDDC. The idea is compute, network and storage are raw resources that are consumed by the applications and services we run to drive our businesses. Rather than look at these resources individually, and manage them as such, we plug them into a a management infrastructure that understands them and can utilize them as services require them. Forget the hardware underneath and imagine a dashboard of your infrastructure something like the following graphic.

 

 

 

The hardware resources become raw resources to be consumed by the IT services. For legacy applications this can be very traditional virtualization or even physical server deployments. New applications and services may be deployed in a PaaS model on the same infrastructure allowing for greater application scale and redundancy and even less tie to the hardware underneath.

 

Lifting the kimono:

Taking a peak underneath the top level reveals a series of technologies both new and old. Additionally there are some requirements that may or may not be met by current technology offerings. We’ll take a look through the compute, storage and network requirements of SDDC one at a time starting with compute and working our way up.

 

Compute is the layer that requires the least change. Years ago we moved to the commodity x86 hardware which will be the base of these systems. The compute platform itself will be differentiated by CPU and memory density, platform flexibility and cost. Differentiators traditionally built into the hardware such as availability and serviceability features will lose value. Features that will continue to add value will be related to infrastructure reduction and enablement of upper level management and virtualization systems. Hardware that provides flexibility and programmability will be king here and at other layers as we’ll discuss.

 

Other considerations at the compute layer will tie closely into storage. As compute power itself has grown by leaps and bounds our networks and storage systems have become the bottleneck. Our systems can process our data faster than we can feed it to them. This causes issues for power, cooling efficiency and overall optimization. Dialing down performance for power savings is not the right answer. Instead we want to fuel our processors with data rather than starve them. This means having fast local data in the form of SSD, flash and cache.

 

Storage will require significant change, but changes that are already taking place or foreshadowed in roadmaps and startups. The traditional storage array will become more and more niche as it has limited capacities of both performance and space. In its place we’ll see new options including, but not limited to migration back to local disk, and scale-out options. Much of the migration to centralized storage arrays was fueled by VMware’s vMotion, DRS, FT etc. These advanced features required multiple servers to have access to the same disk, hence the need for shared storage. VMware has recently announced a combination of storage vMotion and traditional vMotion that allows live migration without shared storage. This is available in other hypervisor platforms and makes local storage a much more viable option in more environments.

 

Scale-out systems on the storage side are nothing new. Lefthand and Equalogic pioneered much of this market before being bought by HP and Dell respectively. The market continues to grow with products like Isilon (acquired by EMC) making a big splash in the enterprise as well as plays in the Big Data market. NetApp’s cluster mode is now in full effect with OnTap 8.1 allowing their systems to scale out. In the SMB market new players with fantastic offerings like Scale Computing are making headway and bringing innovation to the market. Scale out provides a more linear growth path as both I/O and capacity increase with each additional node. This is contrary to traditional systems which are always bottle necked by the storage controller(s).

 

We will also see moves to central control, backup and tiering of distributed storage, such as storage blades and server cache. Having fast data at the server level is a necessity but solves only part of the problem. That data must also be made fault tolerant as well as available to other systems outside the server or blade enclosure. EMC’s VFcache is one technology poised to help with this by adding the server as a storage tier for software tiering. Software such as this place the hottest data directly next the processor with tier options all the way back to SAS, SATA, and even tape.

 

By now you should be seeing the trend of software based feature and control. The last stage is within the network which will require the most change. Network has held strong to proprietary hardware and high margins for years while the rest of the market has moved to commodity. Companies like Arista look to challenge the status quo by providing software feature sets, or open programmability layered onto fast commodity hardware. Additionally Software Defined Networking has been validated by both VMware’s acquisition of Nicira and Cisco’s spin-off of Insieme which by most accounts will expand upon the CiscoOne concept with a Cisco flavored SDN offering. In any event the race is on to build networks based on software flows that are centrally managed rather than the port-to-port configuration nightmare of today’s data centers.

 

This move is not only for ease of administration, but also required to push our systems to the levels required by cloud and SDDC. These multi-tenant systems running disparate applications at various service tiers require tighter quality of service controls and bandwidth guarantees, as well as more intelligent routes. Today’s physically configured networks can’t provide these controls. Additionally applications will benefit from network visibility allowing them to request specific flow characteristics from the network based on application or user requirements. Multiple service levels can be configured on the same physical network allowing traffic to take appropriate paths based on type rather than physical topology. These network changes are require to truly enable SDDC and Cloud architectures.

 

Further up the stack from the Layer 2 and Layer 3 transport networks comes a series of other network services that will be layered in via software. Features such as: load-balancing, access-control and firewall services will be required for the services running on these shared infrastructures. These network services will need to be deployed with new applications and tiered to the specific requirements of each. As with the L2/L3 services manual configuration will not suffice and a ‘big picture’ view will be required to ensure that network services match application requirements. These services can be layered in from both physical and virtual appliances but will require configurability via the centralized software platform.

 

Summary:

 

By combining current technology trends, emerging technologies and layering in future concepts the software defined data center will emerge in evolutionary fashion. Today’s highly virtualized data centers will layer on technologies such as SDN while incorporating new storage models bringing their data centers to the next level. Conceptually picture a mainframe pooling underlying resources across a shared application environment. Now remove the frame.

 

Vmware Interview Questions - Part 3

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

What is the maximum Hosts in Linked‐mode environment?

• 1000

What is the maximum Hosts per datacenter?

• 100

What is the maximum Hosts per vCenter Server if the vCenter Server is running on a 64-Bit OS ?
• 300

What is the maximum Hosts per vCenter Server if the vCenter Server is running on a 32-Bit OS ?

• 200

What is the maximum Linked vCenter Server systems?

• 10


What is the Maximum Floppy controllers per virtual machine?

• 1

What is the Maximum VMDirectPath SCSI targets per virtual machine?

• 60

What is the Maximum Virtual SCSI adapters per virtual machine?

• 4

What is the Maximum Virtual SCSI targets per virtual SCSI adapter?

• 15

What is the Maximum IDE controllers per virtual machine?

• 1

What is the Maximum Parallel ports per virtual machine?

• 3

What is the Maximum Floppy devices per virtual machine?

• 2

What is the Maximum Virtual SCSI targets per virtual machine?

• 60

What is the Maximum VMDirectPath PCI/PCIe devices per virtual machine?

• 2

What is the Maximum RAM per virtual machine?

• 255GB

What is the Maximum Virtual machine swap file size?

• 255GB

What is the Maximum IDE devices per virtual machine?

• 4

What is the Maximum Virtual CPUs per virtual machine (Virtual SMP) ?

• 8

What is the Maximum Concurrent remote console connections to a virtual machine?

• 40

What is the Maximum Virtual NICs per virtual machine?

• 10

What is the Maximum Serial ports per virtual machine?

• 4

What is the Maximum virtual machine Disk Size?

• 2TB minus 512B

Vmware Interview Questions - Part 2

Click Here for Part 1


1. Explain the physical topology of Virtual Infrastructure 3 Data Centre?

a typical VMware Infrastructure data center consists of basic physical building blocks such as x86 computing servers, storage networks and arrays, IP networks, a management server and desktop clients.

2. How do you configure Clusters, Hosts, and Resource Pools in VI3?

A cluster is a group of servers working together closely as a single server, to provide high availability, load balancing and high performance.  A host is a single x86 computing server with individual computing and memory resources. Resource pools are allocation of the available resources in to pieces for the proper distribution.

3. What are resource pools & what’s the advantage of implementing them?

A VMware ESX Resource pool is a pool of CPU and memory resources. Inside the pool, resources are allocated based on the CPU and memory shares that are defined. This pool can have associated access control and permissions. Clear management of resources to the virtual machines.

4. Explain why VMware ESX Server is preferred over Virtual Server or Workstation for enterprise implementation?

For better resource management as it has a virtualization layer involved in its kernel, which communicates with the hardware directly.

5. In what different scenarios or methods can you manage a VI3 ?

Using the Virtual Infrastructure Client we can manage one esx server, using virtual center we can manage more than 1 esx server.. and also we can use service console to manage it.
http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1280576_mem1,00.html

6. Explain the difference between access through Virtual Infrastructure Client (vi client), Web access, Service Console access(ssh) ?

Using VI Client we can access the ESX server as well as Virtual Center Server also, here we can use unix type of authentication or windows type authentication. But to access the service console, we should use unix type of authentication preferably even though we can access the service console through ad authentication using esxcfg-auth, but it does not support all functions to work on, all the functions are available only with root account which is based on red hat Linux kernel. Using the web access also we can manage virtual center as well as a single host. But all the enterprise features are not supported.

Console access to the Service Console

The disadvantages to this mode are

you must be at the console (or connect using an IP KVM) and
you must know Linux to accomplish your task (no GUI).

SSH to the Service Console

You can SSH to the console prompt of an ESX server and receive the same Linux text console access as I showed above. Telnet is not allowed. To use this method, the ESX server must be working on the network and you must have an SSH client on your PC to connect. Again, in this mode, you don't get a GUI interface.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Web Access to the ESX Server

This is the VMware VI Web Access interface. The benefit to using this is that you get a GUI client for your ESX server without having to install a client on your local machine. The downside to the web interface is that you can only perform basic ESX functions like controlling existing machines (start/stop/pause) and console remote access. You cannot add new VMs, work with VM storage, or VM networks. Still, this is a great interface if you just need to check the status of your ESX VMs, restart a VM, or use console remote control.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client (VI Client) to the Server

The benefits to the VI client are that you have full access to do whatever is needed on the ESX Server and you get a GUI client to do it in. The only downside is that you must install the VI client application to do this. However, the installation is negligible and the VI client is the absolute best way to administer your ESX Server.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client (VI Client) to the Virtual Center Server (VC Server)

From this VI VC interface, you can manage all ESX servers, VM storage, VM networks, and more. Virtual Center, of course, is an optional product that requires additional licenses and hardware.

7. Explain advantages or features of VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) ?

It’s a clustered file system, excellent support for sharing between ESX servers in a cluster.

Features

Allows access by multiple ESX Servers at the same time by implementing per-file locking. SCSI Reservations are only implemented when LUN meta data is updated (e.g. file name change, file size change, etc.)

Add or delete an ESX Server from a VMware VMFS volume without disrupting other ESX Server hosts.
LVM allows for adaptive block sizing and addressing for growing files allows you to increase a VMFS volume on the fly (by spanning multiple VMFS volumes)
With ESX/ESXi4 VMFS volumes also can be expanded using LUN expansion
Optimize your virtual machine I/O with adjustable volume, disk, file and block sizes.
Recover virtual machines faster and more reliably in the event of server failure with Distributed journaling.

Limitations

Can be shared with up to 32 ESX Servers.
Can support LUNs with max size of 2TB and a max VMFS size of 64 TB as of version 4 (vSphere).
"There is a VMFS-3 limitation where each tree of linked clones can only be run on 8 ESX servers. For instance, if there is a tree of disks off the same base disk with 40 leaf nodes in the tree, all 40 leaf nodes can be simultaneously run but they can only run on up to 8 ESX hosts."
VMFS-3 limits files to 262,144 (218) blocks, which translates to 256 GB for 1 MB block sizes (the default) up to 2 TB for 8 MB block sizes.

8. What are the types of data stores supported in ESX3.5 ?

iSCSI datastores, FC SAN datastores, Local VMFS, NAS and NFS

9. How can you configure these different types of datastores on ESX3.5 ?

If we have FC cards installed on the esx servers, by going to the storage option, we can scan for the luns.

10.What is Vmware Consolidate Backup (VCB) ? Explain your work exposure in this area ?
VMware Consolidated Backup is  a backup framework, which enables 3rd party tools to take backups. VCB is used to help you backup your VMware ESX virtual servers. Essentially, VCB is a "backup proxy server". It is not backup software. If you use VCB, you still need backup software. It is commonly installed on its own dedicated Windows physical server.

Here are the benefits of VMware's VCB:

 •Centralize backups of VMware ESX Virtual Servers
 •Provide file-level backups of VMware ESX Virtual Servers - both full and incremental (file level backup available to only Windows guests)
 •Provide image-level backups
 •Prevent you from having to load a backup agent on every Virtual Machine
 •Prevent you from having to shutdown Virtual Machines to get a backup
 •Provides LAN-Free backup because the VCB server is connected to the SAN through your fibre channel adaptor
 •Provides centralized storage of Virtual Server backups on the VCB server, that is then moved to your backup tapes through the 3rd party backup agent you install
 •Reduces the load on the VMware ESX servers by not having to load a 3rd party backup agent on either the VMware ESX service console or on each virtual machine.
 •Utilizes VMware Snapshots

Basically, here is how VCB works:

 •If you are doing a file level backup, VCB does a snapshot of the VM, mounts the snapshot, and allows you to backup that mounted "drive" through VCB to your 3rd party backup software
 •If you are doing an image level backup of the VM, VCB does a snapshot of the VM, copies the snapshot to the VCB server, unsnaps the VM, and allows you to backup the copied snapshot image with your 3rd party backup software.


11. How do you configure VMware Virtual Centre Management Server for HA & DRS ? What are the conditions to be satisfied for this setup?

HA & DRS are the properties of a Cluster. A Cluster can be created only when more than one host added, in that case we need to configure HA & DRS as well to provide High Availability and Load balancing between hosts and for the virtual machines.

12.Explain your work related to below terms :
VM Provisioning:  Virtual Machine  Creation.
Alarms & Event Management: Alarms are used to know the status of the resource usage for a VM. Events are used monitor the tasks that are taken place on the esx servers or in the virtual center
Task Scheduler: Task scheduler, if you want to schedule a task it will be used, for example if you want move one vm from one host to another host or if you want shutdown/reboot a vm etc.
Hardware Compatibility List: what are the hardware that compatible with ESX OS.

13.What SAN or NAS boxes have you configured VMware with ? How did you do that ?

Storage team will provide the LUN information, with that we will add those LUNs to ESX hosts from VM storage.

14.What kind of applications or setups you have on you Virtual Machines ?

Exchange server and Share Point, but these are for DEMO purposes, Cirtrix presentation servers etc.

15. Have you ever faced ESX server crashing and Virtual Centre Server crash? How do you know the cause of these crashes in these cases ?

16. Will HA work if Virtual Center Server is down ?

A1) HA continues to work if VC is down - the agents are initially configured by virtual center, but HA operations are controlled by local agents on ESX. VC does NOT monitor the ESX servers for HA. ESX servers monitor each other.
DRS do not work while VC is down.
A2) For DRS, the config and logic is completely in VC.
For HA, only the config is in VC. The logic is in the service consoles, and that's where the reaction is coming from. VC will notice the HA reaction afterwards when it connects to the service consoles the next time.
No, Why because all these futures are comes with Virtual Center only.

17. What are the situations which triggers vMotion automatically?

Resource Contention between virtual machines (DRS)
Distributed power management

18. What is DRS/HA/DPM/dvSwitch/FT/vApps/vSafe/vShields ? :-)

DRS : Distributed Resource Scheduling
HA : High Availability
DPM : Distributed Power Management
dvSwitch : Distribute vSwitch – It’s a new feature introduced in vSphere4.0
FT : Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines – it’s a new feature introduced in vSphere4.0
vApps : vApp is a container same as resource pool, but it is having some features of virtual machines, a vApp can be powered on or powered off, and it can be cloned too.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1308457#1308457

vmSafe : VMsafe's application programming interfaces are designed to help third-party vendors create virtualization security products that better secure VMware ESX, vShield Zones is a security tool targets the VMware administrator.

vShield : VShield Zones is essentially a virtual firewall designed to protect VMs and analyze virtual network traffic. This three-part series describes vShield Zones, explains how to install it and provides useful management tips. To begin, let's get started with the basics: what vShield Zones is and how it works.

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1363051_mem1,00.html

19. What are the requirement for FT ?
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/209955

20. What are the differences between ESX and ESXi ?

ESX is an OS with full features of virtualization, ESXi is a limited features OS with 32MB image.

21. Which are the new features introduced in vSphere 4 ? *****

1. 64-bit hypervisor - Although not everyone realized it, the hypervisor in ESX Server 3.5 was 32-bit. As a result, ESX Server 3.5 couldn't take full advantage of today's more powerful 64-bit hardware platforms. ESX Server 4.0 uses a native 64-bit hypervisor that provides significant performance and scalability enhancements over the previous versions. However, the new hypervisor does require a 64-bit hardware platform.

2. Increased VM scalability - ESX Server 4.0's new 64-bit architecture provides significant increases in scalability. ESX Server 4.0 supports virtual machines (VMs) with up to 255GB of RAM per VM. In addition, the vSphere 4.0 Enterprise Plus edition provides support for up to 8-way virtual SMP per VM. The other editions support up to 4-way virtual SMP. These gains are available on both Windows and Linux guests.

3. Hot add CPU, RAM, and virtual disks - This important enhancement in vSphere 4.0 is designed to create a dynamic IT infrastructure through the ability to add CPU, RAM, and virtual disks to a running VM. The hot add capability lets you dynamically increase your VMs' performance during periods of high resource demands.

4. Thin provisioning - This feature is nothing new to Microsoft virtualization users; vSphere now offers a thin-provisioning feature that's essentially the equivalent of Hyper-V's dynamic disks. Thin provisioning lets you create and provision a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), but the host uses only the amount of storage that's actually required by the VM rather than using the VHD's allocated size.

5. VMware Fault Tolerance - Fault Tolerance is a new high-availability feature in vSphere 4.0. Fault Tolerance works only between two systems. It uses a technology called vLockstep to provide protection from system failure with absolutely no downtime. VMware's vLockstep technology keeps the RAM and the virtual processors of two VMs in sync at the instruction level.

6. vNetwork Distributed Switch—vSphere 4.0's vNetwork Distributed Switch lets you create and share network configurations between multiple servers. The vNetwork Distributed Switch spans multiple ESX Server hosts, letting you configure and manage virtual networks at the cluster level. It also lets you move network configuration and state with a VM when the VM is live migrated between ESX Server hosts.

7. IPv6 support - Another enhancement in vSphere 4.0 is support for IPv6. Many organizations are planning to move to IPv6. vSphere's IPv6 support lets customers manage vCenter Server and ESX Server hosts in mixed IPv4/IPv6 network environments.

8. vApps—vApps essentially lets you manage as a single entity multiple servers that comprise an n-tiered application. Using vApps, you can combine multiple VMs, their interdependencies, and their resource allocations together as a unit. You can manage all the components of the vApps as a single unit, letting you power off, clone, and deploy all the vApps components in the same operations.

9. vSphere Host Update Utility—The new vSphere Host Update Utility lets you centrally update your ESXi and ESX Server 3.0 and later hosts to ESX Server 4.0. The UI displays the status of the remote updates in real time.

10. VMware vShield Zones—VMware's new vShield Zones let customers enforce network access protection between VMs running in the virtual data center. The vShield Zones feature lets you isolate, bridge, and firewall traffic across vCenter deployments.

22. Which are the traffic shaping options available to configure?23. What is promiscuous mode ?

If the promiscuous mode is enabled for a switch, the traffic sent that switch will be visible to all vm’s connected to that switch. I mean, the data will be broadcasted.

24. What makes iSCSI and FC diffrent ?
Addressing Scheme, iSCSI relies on IP and FC not, and the type of transfer of data also. In FC the data transferred as blocks, in iSCSI the data transferred as files. The cabling also, FC uses Fibre cable and iSCSI uses RJ45.
25. What is the format for iSCSI addressing ?

IP Address

26. VM's Task Manager shows performance normal, But vCenter reports high resource utilization, what is the reason ?
Search KEY WORDS : VM's performance normal,  vCenter reports high resource utilization
http://communities.vmware.com/message/897975

27. What are the different types of memory management tricks available under ESX ?

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/esx-memory-management/

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~fabianb/classes/cs-443-s05/ESX.pps

28. What is vmmemctl ?

http://pubs.vmware.com/vi3/resmgmt/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=resmgmt&file=vc_advanced_mgmt.11.24.html

29. How we can list pNICs & status using command line ?

ifconfig –a

30. What is resource pool ? What are the use of it ?
A resource pool is a logical abstraction for flexible management of resources. Resource pools can be grouped into hierarchies and used to hierarchically partition available CPU and memory resources.

31. How HA works.
VMware HA provides high availability for virtual machines by pooling them and the hosts they reside on into a cluster. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a failure, the virtual machines on a failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.

32. Is HA dependent on virtual center
(Only for Install)
33. What is the Maximum Host Failure allowed in a cluster
(4)
34. How does HA know to restart a VM from a dropped Host
(storage lock will be removed from the metadata)

35.How many iSCSI targets will ESX support
8 for 3.01, (64 for 3.5)
36 How Many Fiber Channel targets
(256) (128 on Install)

37 What is Vmotion

(ability to move running vm from one host to another)

38 What is virtual SMP –
when and why should you give a vm multiple vCPUs - part of their answer whould be that best pracrtice is to start with a single vCPU because of you can run into perfomance issues do to CPU scheduling

39 Ask what version of Linux kernel does ESX run

if they are truly experienced they should say ESX is not Linux and does not use a Linux kernel - and give them an extra poijnt if they explain that the service console runs a modified version of Red Hat Ent 3 -

40 does HA use vmotion?

the answer is no - vm stops and restarts on ESX other host

41. what is the different when you use viclient connect to VC and directly to ESX server itself.

When you connect to VC you manage ESX server via vpxa (Agent on esx server). Vpxa then pass those request to hostd (management service on esx server). When you connect to ESX server directly, you connect to hostd (bypass vpxa). You can extend this to a trobleshoot case, where connect to esx see one thing and connect to VC see another. So the problem is most likely out of sync between hostd and vpxa, "service vmware-vpxa restart" should take care of it.

42. What was the most difficult VMWare related problem/issue you faced in a production environment and what were the specific steps you took to resolve it?

HA issues – because of dns problems, the hosts are unable to communicate together. Corrected by adding all servers ip’s in each server’s /etc/hosts file
VM was not powered up –because the swap file was locked by another host, when I try to power on the vm its not powering up. After releasing the lock its powered on.

43. When was the last time you called VM Support and what was the issue?

Licensing related issues.

44. What was the most performance intensive production app that you supported in VMware and what were the some of the challenges that it posed?

In exchange sharepoint demo project, getting lot of VLAN issues. (its my experience, you can say yours)

45. How would you determine that a perf intensive app is a good candidate? Spefically what tools would you use to identify candidates. Specifically inside those tools what metrics would you use?

46. What is yor philosophy on how much of the data center can be virtualized? (If the interviewer wants max virtualization, but the interviewee is not convinced that this is a good idea, this could be a deal breaker)

47. What is your opinion on the virtualization vendors (MS vs VM vs Citrix vs etc) and why? (Just trying to figure out if the candidate is keeping up with this ever changing virtualization market)

48. I beleive another good question would be to ask the candidate to briefly describe VST, VGT & EST mode and 802.1Q trunking. I say this because networking is such an important part of VMware implementations and on going support.., do you really want a VMware engineer working in your environment if they lack the knowledge of these concepts (+unless of course they are only delegated with low level permissions for generic VM operations+)

More information on these mode's can be found here: www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_vlan_wp.pdf
Also ask the candidate to explain why one mode would be used as opposed to another?, remember that there can be numerous reasons for the use of different modes depending on your company/client's network, security policies etc..

49. If you are interviewing for a consultant role it would also be a good scenario to provide a brief overview of a fictional network and ask the candidate to do a whiteboard draft of how the network would be layed out if say the ESX servers have 6 NIC's or 8 NIC's etc.. etc...

50. What are notable files that represent a VM?

.vmx – configuration settings for VM
.vmxf – configuration settings used to support an XML-based VM configuration API
.vmtx – configuration settings for a Template VM (replaces the .vmx file)
.vmdk – virtual disk file. (Note: if a thick disk is used, a–flat.vmdk file that represents the actual monolithic disk file will exist but will be hidden from the vSphere Client.)
.nvram – non-volatile memory (BIOS)
.vswp – swap file used by ESX/ESXi per VM to overcommit memory, i.e. use more memory than physically available. This is created by the host automatically when powering on a VM and deleted (default behavior) when powering off a VM. Swap files can remain and take up space if a host failed prior to shutting down a VM properly. Normally the swap file is stored in the location where the VM configuration files are kept; however the location can be optionally located elsewhere—for example, locally for performance reasons and if using NAS/NFS, local swap should be used.
.vmss – suspend file (if placed into suspend power mode)
.vmsd – for snapshot management
.vmsn – snapshot file

51. Host Profiles
What licensing is required for Host Profiles? Available with vSphere Enterprise Plus edition.

52 Can Host Profiles work with ESX/ESXi 3.x hosts?
•No. Only starting with ESX/ESXi 4.0.

53 Can Host Profiles be used with a cluster running both ESX and ESXi hosts?
•Yes, but remember to use an ESX host and not an ESXi host to create a profile for use.
•In theory, Host Profiles should work with mixed host clusters, as it translates ESX to ESXi, but be careful as there are enough differences between ESX and ESXi that can lead you to make self-inflicted errors when applying Host Profiles. The easiest method is to create clusters that are homogeneous and maintain two different profiles for these two types of clusters.

54 Can Host Profiles work when using the Cisco Nexus 1000v?
•No, because Host Profiles was designed with the generic vNetwork Distributed Switch. The Cisco Nexus 1000v switch gives administrators finer-grained control of the networking beyond what Host Profiles can apply.

55. What are host profiles?
A set of best practiced configuration rules, which are can be applied to entire cluster or to an individual host. So that all the hosts in sync with each other, this will avoid vmotion, drs and ha problems.
56. Could not power on VM: no swap file
My ESXi 3.5 machine runs 8-10 VMs (Win2k3 and WinXP) normally. At the moment, 5 of them are complaining that they cannot Power On. They seem to start and then complain "Could not power on VM: no swap file". I had a look with the data browser. It's a small installation, so the vswp files ought to be in the same directory as the vmx file (I did not inttionally put them anywhere else). Of course I don't see a vswp file there because the machine is not running. I don't know enough about the vmx file structure to identify if anything is wrong in the specifications. I have downloaded one of the vmx files and attached it here. Please either tell me what to change in that vmx file, or suggest another approach to get the machines to start.
57. What are the available Storage options for virtual machines ? Raw device mappings, VMFS
inShare0
There are two ways to provision storage for virtual machines (VMs) on a storage area network (SAN). One way is to use VMFS, the proprietary, high-performance clustered file system provided with VMware Infrastructure (VI). Using virtual disks (VMDK files) on VMFS is the preferred option for most enterprise applications, and as such supports the full range of functionality available in a VI implementation, including VM snapshots, VMotion, Storage VMotion, and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB).
The other way to provision storage is Raw Device Mapping (RDM). RDMs are sometimes needed in instances where virtualized access to the underlying storage would interfere in the operation of software running within the VM. One such example is SAN management software, which typically requires direct access to the underlying hardware; and thus would need to use an RDM instead of a virtual disk. In this tip, I'll discuss what RDMs are and when to use them over a virtual disk.
Defining raw device mappings
An RDM is a file that resides within a VMFS volume that acts as a proxy, or an intermediary, for a raw physical device. One can think of an RDM as a symbolic link to a raw LUN. The RDM contains metadata and other information about the raw physical device being accessed and can, depending upon the configuration of the RDM, add features like VMotion support and snapshots to VMs that are using raw LUNs.
Why use RDMs instead of virtual disk

58. What are the differences between Virtual and Physical compatibility modes when mapping the Raw Devices to virtual machines?

You can configure RDM in two ways:
Virtual compatibility mode—this mode fully virtualizes the mapped device, which appears to the guest operating system as a virtual disk file on a VMFS volume. Virtual mode provides such benefits of VMFS as advanced file locking for data protection and use of snapshots.

Physical compatibility mode—this mode provides access to most hardware characteristics of the mapped device. VMkernel passes all SCSI commands to the device, with one exception, thereby exposing all the physical characteristics of the underlying hardware. In this mode, the mapping is done as follows, when we create a mapping, the configuration stored in a file and that file is stored with the vm files in datastore. This file points to the raw device and makes it accessible to the vm.

59. What are RDM Limitations?

RDM limitations
There are two types of RDMs: virtual compatibility mode RDMs and physical compatibility mode RDMs. Physical mode RDMs, in particular, have some fairly significant limitations:
•No VMware snapshots
•No VCB support, because VCB requires VMware snapshots
•No cloning VMs that use physical mode RDMs
•No converting VMs that use physical mode RDMs into templates
•No migrating VMs with physical mode RDMs if the migration involves copying the disk
•No VMotion with physical mode RDMs

Virtual mode RDMs address some of these issues, allowing raw LUNs to be treated very much like virtual disks and enabling functionality like VMotion, snapshotting, and cloning. Virtual mode RDMs are acceptable in most cases where RDMs are required. For example, virtual mode RDMs can be used in virtual-to-virtual cluster across physical hosts. Note that physical-to-virtual clusters across boxes, though, require physical mode RDMs.

While virtual disks will work for the large majority of applications and workloads in a VI environment, the use of RDMs--either virtual mode RDMs or physical mode RDMs--can help eliminate potential compatibility issues or allow applications to run virtualized without any loss of functionality.

Vmware Interview Questions - Part 1

1. VMWare Kernel is a Proprietary Kenral and is not based on any of the UNIX operating systems, it's a kernel developed by VMWare Company.

2. The VMKernel can't boot it by itself, so that it takes the help of the 3rd party operating system. In VMWare case the kernel is booted by RedHat Linux operating system which is known as service console.

3. The service console is developed based up on Redhat Linux Operating system, it is used to manage the VMKernel

4. To restart webaccess service on vmware
service vmware-webaccess restart – this will restart apache tomcat app

5. To restart ssh service on vmware
service sshd restart

 

6. To restart host agent(vmware-hostd) on vmware esx server
service mgmt-vmware restart

7. Path for the struts-config.xml
/usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/

8. To start the scripted install the command is
esx ks=nfs:111.222.333.444:/data/KS.config ksdevice=eth0
location device name

9. Virtual Network in Simple……………….

Virtual Nic(s) on Virtual Machine(s) ----->

Physical Nic on the ESX Server (Virtual Switch - 56 Ports) ----->

Physical Switch Port Should be trunked with all the VLANS to which the VM's need access

All the ESX servers should be configured with Same number of Physical Nics (vSwitches) and Connectivity also should be same, So that vMotion succeeds
All the Virtual Machines are connected to one vSwitch with Different VLANS, this means the Physical Nic(vSwitch) needs to be trunked with the same VLANS on the Physical Switch Port

10 What are the three port groups present in ESX server networking
1. Virtual Machine Port Group - Used for Virtual Machine Network
2. Service Console Port Group - Used for Service Console Communications
3. VMKernel Port Group - Used for VMotion, iSCSI, NFS Communications

11. What is the use of a Port Group?
The port group segregates the type of communication.

 

12. What are the type of communications which requires an IP address for sure ?
Service Console and VMKernel (VMotion and iSCSI), these communications does not happen without an ip address (Whether it is a single or dedicated)

13. In the ESX Server licensing features VMotion License is showing as Not used, why?
Even though the license box is selected, it shows as "License Not Used" until, you enable the VMotion option for specific vSwitch

14. How the Virtual Machineort group communication works ?

All the vm's which are configured in VM Port Group are able to connect to the physical machines on the network. So this port group enables communication between vSwitch and Physical Switch to connect vm's to Physical Machine's

15. What is a VLAN ?
A VLAN is a logical configuration on the switch port to segment the IP Traffic. For this to happen, the port must be trunked with the correct VLAN ID.

 

16. Does the vSwitches support VLAN Tagging? Why?
Yes, The vSwitches support VLAN Tagging, otherwise if the virtual machines in an esx host are connected to different VLANS, we need to install a separate physical nic (vSwitch) for every VLAN. That is the reason vmware included the VLANtagging for vSwitches. So every vSwitch supports upto 1016 ports, and BTW they can support 1016 VLANS if needed, but an ESX server doesn’t support that many VM’s. :)

17. What is Promiscuous Mode on vSwitch ? What happens if it sets to Accept?
If the promiscuous mode set to Accept, all the communication is visible to all the virtual machines, in other words all the packets are sent to all the ports on vSwitch
If the promiscuous mode set to Reject, the packets are sent to inteded port, so that the intended virtual machine was able to see the communication.

 

18. What is MAC address Changes ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not allow incoming traffic to the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same, and the incoming traffic will be allowed to the VM.

19. What is Forged Transmits ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not allow outgoing traffic from the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same, and the outgoing traffic will be allowed from the VM.

 

20. What are the core services of VC ?
VM provisioning , Task Scheduling and Event Logging

21. Can we do vMotion between two datacenters ? If possible how it will be?
Yes we can do vMotion between two datacenters, but the mandatory requirement is the VM should be powered off.

22. What is VC agent? and what service it is corresponded to? What are the minimum req's for VC agent installation ?
VC agent is an agent installed on ESX server which enables communication between VC and ESX server.
The daemon associated with it is called vmware-hostd , and the service which corresponds to it is called as mgmt-vmware, in the event of VC agent failure just restart the service by typing the following command at the service console

" service mgmt-vmware restart "
VC agent installed on the ESX server when we add it to the VC, so at the time of installtion if you are getting an error like " VC Agent service failed to install ", check the /Opt size whether it is sufficient or not.

23. How can you edit VI Client Settings and VC Server Settings ?
Click Edit Menu on VC and Select Client Settings to change VI settings
Click Administration Menu on VC and Select VC Management Server Configuration to Change VC Settings

24. What are the files that make a Virtual Machine ?
.vmx - Virtual Machine Configuration File
.nvram - Virtual Machine BIOS
.vmdk - Virtual Machine Disk file
.vswp - Virtual Machine Swap File
.vmsd - Virtual MAchine Snapshot Database
.vmsn - Virtual Machine Snapshot file
.vmss - Virtual Machine Suspended State file
.vmware.log - Current Log File
.vmware-#.log - Old Log file

25. What are the devices that can be added while the virtual Machine running
In VI 3.5 we can add Hard Disk and NIC's while the machine running.

In vSphere 4.0 we can add Memory and Processor along with HDD and NIC's while the machine running

 

 

26. How to set the time delay for BIOS screen for a Virtual Machine?
Right Click on VM, select edit settings, choose options tab and select boot option, set the delay how much you want.

27. What is a template ?
We can convert a VM into Template, and it cannot be powered on once its changed to template. This is used to quick provisioning of VM's.

 

23. What to do to customize the windows virtual machine clone,?
copy the sysprep files to Virtual center directory on the server, so that the wizard will take the advantage of it.

24. What to do to customize the linux/unix virtual machine clone,?
VC itself includes the customization tools, as these operating systems are available as open source.

25. Does cloning from template happens between two datacenters ?
Yes.. it can, if the template in one datacenter, we can deploy the vm from that template in another datacenter without any problem.

26. What are the common issues with snapshots? What stops from taking a snapshot and how to fix it ?
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's, then the snapshot failed. If it is mapped as virtual then we can take a snapshot of it.
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's as physical, you need to remove it to take a snapshot.

27. What are the settings that are taken into to consideration when we initiate a snapshot ?
Virtual Machine Configuration (What hardware is attached to it)
State of the Virtual Machine Hard Disk file ( To revert back if needed)
State of the Virtual Machine Memory (if it is powered on)

 

28. What are the requirements for Converting a Physical machine to VM ?
An agent needs to be installed on the Physical machine
VI client needs to be installed with Converter Plug-in
A server to import/export virtual machines

29. What is VMWare consolidated backup ?
It is a backup framework, that supports 3rd party utilities to take backups of ESX servers and Virtual Machines. Its not a backup service.

30. To open the guided consolidation tool, what are the user requirements ?
The user must be member of administrator, The user should have "Logon as service" privileges - To give a user these privileges,open local sec policy, select Logon as service policy and add the user the user should have read access to AD to send queries

 

 

How VMWare Kernel different from other kernels?

VMWare kernel is a proprietary kernel that means that it is a registered kernel by VMWare Company and it is not based on any other kernel architecture or any other operating system. VMWare consists of a kernel that requires an operating system to boot it. A service console is being provided when VMWare kernel is booted.

What are the features provided by VMWare for easy access?

VMWare provides several features to make it easy for the user to access and maintain it. The features are as follows:
• VMWare provides web browser interface
• It provides easy to use wizard to configure the settings
• It provides tools to easily create hosts and maintain it from one place
• It provides easy maintenance of Virtual machines
• It provides easy graphics to configure the VMWare settings for security

What are the features of VMWare Player?

VMWare player is a stand-alone player that comes with the installation of VMWare also. The features that make it more popular are as follows:

• Creation of virtual machines can be done with easy install options. The creation and installation can be done directly to the system.
• VMWare Player can run any virtual machine and it can be used by anyone, anywhere. It allows quick and easy access, to take the advantage of security, portability and flexibility to manage the virtual machines.
• VMWare player allows sharing of virtual machines with other computers or users.

What are the different components used in VMWare infrastructure?

The different and major components used in VMWare infrastructure is as follows:
1. VMWare infrastructure consists of the lowest layer which acts as a ESX server host.
2. VMWare infrastructure also use the virtual centre server that keep tracks of all the VM related images and manage it from one point.
3. VMWare infrastructure (VI) client: this allows the client to interact with user's applications that are running on VMWare.
4. Web browser is used to access the virtual machines.
5. License server is used to create a server that provides licensing to the applications
6. Database servers are used to maintain a database.

What are the benefits of virtualization?

Virtualization is a creation of virtual machines and to manage them from one place. It allows the resources to be shared with large number of network resources. Virtualization is having lots of benefits and they are as follows:
1. It helps in saving lots of cost and allows to easily maintaining it, in less cost.
2. It allows multiple operating systems on one virtualization platform.
3. It removes the dependency of heavy hardware to run the application.
4. It provides consolidating servers that are used for crashing of a server purpose
5. It reduces the amount of space being taken by data centres and company data.

What is the purpose of a Hypervisor?

Hypervisor is a program that manages the virtual machine. It also act like virtual machine manager that manages the many virtual machines from one place. It allows multiple operating system to share single hardware host. Each operating system in this consists of its own defined space consisting of space, memory and processor. It is used as a controller program to control host processors and resources. It separates out the layer between many operating systems so that one can't conflict with another one.

How ESX server related to VMWare?

ESX server is the enterprise edition of VMWare. It provides server virtualization platform that allows many operating systems to be shared together in a convenient way and consists of a centralized management platform that is also known as virtual centre. ESX server is a virtualization technique that is used to create cloud applications and allows easy development of cloud platforms. It is related to VMWare as it is the upper layer of it.
              

What is the difference between ESX and GSX server?

GSX server acts as type 2 hypervisor that gets installed on the host operating system’s hardware like windows and Linux. VMWare workstation gets mixed up with GSX server to provide it more functionality to run your applications and operating systems. ESX server on the other hand, is type 1 hypervisor that runs its software directly on the system’s hardware and it doesn’t require any operating system prior to its installation. It is level 0 hypervisor and it has its own operating system.

What is the use of VMWare workstation?

VMWare workstation is software that allows user to run more than one operating system in there system. It provides virtualization to run different applications on many operating systems at a single time. It saves the current configuration of operating system for the user in the form of virtual machines. VMWare allows user to view there application and work with so many different OS without even switching between the OSs.

What are the different types of extensions used by VMWare?

1. .log: is used to keep a log file to maintain a key for VMWare. This file allows user to see the problems encountered during any installation or while using VMWare.
2. .nvram: is used to store the state of the virtual machine in system’s BIOS.
3. .vmdk: is a virtual disk file that is used to store the content of virtual machine.
4. .vmsd: stores the information and metadata of the system’s snapshots.
5. .vmsn: is used to store the snapshot state. It stores both the running state and the time when you have taken it.
6. .vmss: stores the suspended state of a virtual machine.
7. .vmtm: stores the configuration team data.
8. .vmx: store the primary configurations for the new virtual machine.

How virtual machine’s concept is different for host and guest systems?

Host system is the system that runs the operating system and over which the virtual platform can be installed. The virtual platform that runs another operating system is called as guest operating system. Host and guest can be connected with each other by using the virtual machines. A host system that runs all together its own operating system is called as virtualization host and the guest operating system will be that, which get installed over that operating system.

What are some major differences between VMWare Server and ESX server?

• ESX server is a bare metter virtualation platform that is a physical server whereas, VMWare server needs an operating system to run itself.
• ESX server is type 1 hypervisor virtualization platform whereas, VMWare server is a type-2 hypervisor virtualization platform.
• ESX server gives better performance then VMWare server, due to less overhead.
• ESX server have more features available then VMWare server.
• VMWare server is good to be used on small platforms and with less resources but, ESX server requires high specifications.

What is the use of Para-virtualization? Para-virtualization is a virtualization technique that allows similar virtual machines to be created on particular hardware. It allows many operating systems to run on host hardware at the same time. It makes good use of resources like processors, memory and networking. It acts as a virtual machine monitor that has high performance and more efficient. It is used for development, testing and production of the virtual machines. It also good in disaster recovery by moving the guest virtual machine till the hardware is being repaired. Why snapshots are really important in VMWare? Snapshots are images that is been taken at a particular point from the virtual guest operating system. The snapshot consists of the virtual machine configurations, memory and the devices that were present at the time of the snapshot. By doing this, you can return back to virtual machine which might have become corrupted or might not be working. Snapshots can be taken anytime according to your need and requirement. Snapshots can be saved and then system can be reverted back in case of any disaster happened to your operating system. What are the disadvantages associated with VMWare virtualization platform? The disadvantage of VMWare virtualization platform is as follows: • VMWare concept requires the knowledge of the concept. • It requires money to buy the resources required for virtualization platform. • It requires high end server with lots of high end configuration and specification that increases the cost. • It requires different technologies that have to be implemented for the enterprise virtualization systems. • Reliability decreases and cost increases in case of the system failures.